Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege | |
|---|---|
Frege c. 1879 | |
| Born | Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege 8 November 1848 Wismar, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, German Confederation |
| Died | 26 July 1925 (aged 76) Bad Kleinen, Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Weimar Germany |
| Spouse |
Margarete Lieseberg
(m. 1887; died 1904) |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Göttingen (PhD, 1873) University of Jena (Dr. phil. hab., 1874) |
| Theses | |
Doctoral advisor | Ernst Christian Julius Schering (PhD advisor) |
Other advisors | Ernst Abbe Alfred Clebsch Kuno Fischer Hermann Lotze Eduard Riecke Wilhelm Eduard Weber |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 19th-/20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
School | Analytic philosophy Linguistic turn Logical realism Modern Platonism Logicism Transcendental idealism (before 1891) Metaphysical realism (after 1891) Foundationalism Indirect realism Redundancy theory of truth |
| Institutions | University of Jena |
Notable students | Rudolf Carnap |
Main interests | Philosophy of mathematics, mathematical logic, philosophy of language |
Notable works | Begriffsschrift (1879) The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) Basic Laws of Arithmetic (1893–1903) |
Notable ideas |
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Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (/ˈfreɪɡə/; German: [ˈɡɔtloːp ˈfreːɡə]; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, logic, and mathematics. Though he was largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and, to some extent, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) introduced his work to later generations of philosophers. Frege is widely considered to be one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever.
His contributions include the development of modern logic in the Begriffsschrift and work in the foundations of mathematics. His book the Foundations of Arithmetic is the seminal text of the logicist project, and is cited by Michael Dummett as where to pinpoint the linguistic turn. His philosophical papers "On Sense and Reference" and "The Thought" are also widely cited. The former argues for two different types of meaning and descriptivism. In Foundations and "The Thought", Frege argues for Platonism against psychologism or formalism, concerning numbers and propositions respectively.